


without consequence or cost

by taywen



Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-10-24 08:25:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17700893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taywen/pseuds/taywen
Summary: “He has a pretty mouth,” Micah said carelessly.





	without consequence or cost

**Author's Note:**

  * For [morning_coffee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/morning_coffee/gifts).



Cirro had already worked Crimson Fist over pretty badly by the time Micah got there.

He had several systems monitoring Crimson’s movements at any given moment, but their reach only extended as far as the city’s CCTV or other electronic devices connected to networks that Micah could access. Cirro ran a tight operation, backed by a powerful corporation that could afford the most expensive cyber security, and he knew better than to take down Cadel’s bright new hero within range of the CCTV or worse, some idiots with a cell phone that would record it rather than run away from the inevitable destruction.

Fortunately, one of Cirro’s henchmen had been stupid enough to tweet about it. The account was set to private, but Micah followed them all from a fake “villain stan” account that he checked periodically when he had nothing better to do. He knew all of Cadel’s dark places, and it hadn’t taken him long to figure out the abandoned warehouse from which the short video had been shot.

“Micah.” Cirro’s voice came out emotionless, filtered by the modulator fitted over the lower half of his face. It looked like a cross between a gas mask and some kind of underwater breathing apparatus; Micah still had no idea whether it served any purpose beyond changing Cirro’s voice. Why he bothered with the half-mask, when it left his striking blue-grey eyes visible, Micah couldn’t say either. “What do you want.”

His minions eyed Micah warily, but made no move to intervene. Smart of them. Unlike Crimson, Micah had no qualms about killing them if they got in his way. Cirro was a different matter; the villains of Cadel had achieved a delicate balance of alliances and enmities over the years that Micah would prefer not to destroy. He’d survive it, but it would be rather more trouble than he wanted to deal with at the moment.

“The hero.” Micah didn’t let his gaze stray to Crimson’s prone form. One look at the unnatural sprawl of his limbs, at his blood mixed with the rain coming through the collapsing roof, had been enough.

Cirro tilted his head, his eyes darkening to a stormy grey; overhead, the clouds seemed to press closer. It was a largely empty threat. Cirro could manipulate the weather, but he wasn’t very strong. He’d already created the storm out of a clear night, and likely hit Crimson with lightning at least once. He didn’t have the strength left to fight Micah off.

“Why?”

“He has a pretty mouth,” Micah said carelessly.

Cirro rolled his eyes at that. “Watch him,” he ordered the milling minions, and led Micah into a trashed office out of the rain. “What’s the real reason, Micah?” he demanded once they were alone.

“If you kill him, they’ll make him a martyr,” Micah said. “I get it. Having a hero around is annoying.” If you ran with a bunch of incompetent minions, like Cirro did. He had no business rolling his eyes at Micah commenting on Crimson’s mouth when Micah was almost entirely certain Cirro hired his henchpeople solely based on how attractive they were. “But who knows who might show up if one of us kills Crimson Fist. Sure, Cadel won’t have a hero again for a while, but more will show up soon enough.”

Static crackled out of the modulator; a sigh, maybe. “Fine. You’d tell everyone it was me if I killed him anyway.”

Micah smiled thinly, not bothering to deny it. Cirro’s eyes narrowed, but he stalked back out to the abandoned storage area without another word.

“We’re leaving.” Cirro didn’t pause in his stride as he moved past his minions.

They exchanged startled looks. One particularly dull goon said, confused, “But, boss—”

“Now.” The word was as emotionless as ever, but Cirro’s eyes had shifted when he glared over his shoulder. Lightning flashed down through the broken roof; in the ringing silence following the deafening thunderclap, Cirro’s electric blue eyes seemed to glow malevolently.

The minions scrambled after him. Their grey uniforms weren’t terrible, but set against the brilliant white Cirro wore, they looked like a bunch of cygnets following after their father.

Micah waited until the clouds began to clear, the rain slowing to a steady shower rather than the torrential downpour that had first greeted him, before approaching Crimson. The hero’s mask—crimson, of course—was the opposite of Cirro’s, covering the upper half his face but leaving the area around his mouth exposed. Opaque lenses concealed his eyes, but even if Micah could see them, Crimson could have faked unconsciousness.

His chest rose and fell steadily, and he didn’t so much as twitch when Micah crouched before him, nor when Micah checked his limbs for any obvious broken bones. A low groan escaped him as Micah lifted him in his arms, but that was the extent of his reaction. His bodysuit was torn in places, but none of the wounds beneath were bleeding too badly.

He’d live.

* * *

In an interview about a month after he’d first appeared in Cadel, Crimson had claimed he had enhanced strength and reflexes. That much was true; Micah had seen enough shaky cell phone videos of Crimson beating up the city’s various villains to confirm it. But the bleeding had mostly stopped by the time Micah reached a nearby safe house; some of them were already closed. A healing factor, then, but weak enough that it wasn’t immediately obvious. What other secrets was Crimson hiding?

Micah considered the mask. It was connected almost seamlessly to the form-fitting bodysuit, but he could get it off if he really wanted to. Part of him did want to; another reminded him that if he truly wanted to uncover Crimson’s civilian identity, he could simply track the hero down online.

Crimson’s mouth twisted, his lips parting around a soft groan, the loose sprawl of his limbs tensing as he started to regain consciousness. Micah retreated to the chair in the corner.

Watching Crimson waken completely was—interesting. He tensed, voicing another groan before stopping himself; he checked the mask first, then his belt—but Micah had taken the precaution of removing what Cirro had left of his arsenal of weapons and other gadgets when they’d arrived at the safe house—and then he checked over the rest of his body for injuries.

Finally, he sat up and looked around the room, going stock still when he saw Micah watching him.

“Interesting decor,” Crimson said, but his trademark cheerful tone was more ragged than usual. He held himself tense, none of the confidence that he exuded in other situations evident now. Well, he had found himself in an undisclosed location with a powerful enemy, so maybe that kind of reaction wasn’t unexpected.

“I’ll pass your compliments to my interior designer,” Micah said, resisting the urge to roll his eyes if only because it was beneath his dignity. He wasn’t some young brat like Cirro.

Crimson gave a wooden laugh.

“Did Cirro’s lightning mess with your head too badly for your healing factor to deal with?” Micah asked, covering his mild concern with sarcasm. He hadn’t taken off the mask to examine Crimson’s head, after all. It was intact, aside from a few scuffs, unlike the rest of his uniform, so Micah had assumed it would be fine.

Crimson tensed. “How do you know—” He drew in a slow breath, then deliberately lowered his shoulders. He still looked seconds away from punching his way out, though.

“Well, at least you remember you have a healing factor,” Micah said lightly.

“Just get it over with!” Crimson burst out, then turned his head away as if ashamed.

Micah considered that for a few seconds. Did Crimson expect a lecture? A villainous monologue? Micah leaned more towards quips and banter, which Crimson had previously been more than willing to reciprocate. His behaviour now was fairly baffling.

“What are you going on about?” Micah asked at last.

A muscle in Crimson’s jaw jumped. “You said— You told Cirro that I—”

“—‘Have a pretty mouth’, yes,” Micah repeated drily. So Crimson had been conscious when Micah first arrived. “I assume you’ve seen yourself in a mirror before.”

Crimson’s hands clenched into fists against his thighs, his breath coming in increasingly rapid gasps, and just before Micah could really muster worry that Cirro had done lasting damage, slid off the bed to his knees before Micah.

He stared for several brief, endless seconds before—

“I’m not going to _rape you_ ,” Micah said sharply. He was standing now; the chair had fallen on its side.

Crimson leapt to his feet as well, his mouth soft with surprise before it hardened into a scowl. “You’re a villain,” he spat. “Sorry for assuming the worst of you.”

Micah slammed him up against the wall, pinning him to the concrete. He was—furious. He saved Crimson’s life, and this was the thanks he received in return? Before that thought could spiral out of control, Micah reined his temper in as best he could and gazed at Crimson evenly. The hero was stiff and unmoving, impossible to read.

Crimson might have enhanced strength and reflexes, but he couldn’t react fast enough to avoid Micah catching his chin in a firm grip. He put his thumb to that plush lower lip, a steady pressure that Crimson couldn’t ignore. It really was a shame Micah had left him the mask; he wished he could see Crimson’s eyes. Crimson stiffened even further as Micah leaned in, bloodied lips parting to reveal bared teeth. Would he bite? Micah wished he would, for a number of reasons.

He halted with scant inches between them. “If I really intended to fuck you, Crimson, you’d know it, and you’d beg me for it.”

He turned and left then, but when he watched the surveillance footage later, the camera captured the way Crimson leaned after Micah before he caught himself. Crimson stayed against the wall for several long minutes, one hand raised to his mouth to press the tip of his fingers where Micah’s thumb had been, before he shook his head as if to clear it and stalked out.

Micah replayed the footage several times more. Perhaps Crimson wasn’t as opposed to the idea as he’d seemed; perhaps his reaction hadn’t been the disgust Micah had initially taken it for.

Or perhaps Micah was projecting what he wanted onto the exchange. He watched the last few minutes again, and again, and wondered.

* * *

He’d played himself, Micah realized a few days later. Crimson did have a pretty mouth, but he’d never consciously acknowledged it before mentioning it to Cirro. It had been purely aesthetic appreciation before, but now it was coupled with the image of Crimson kneeling before him. Now that he’d seen the cracks in Crimson’s armour—literal and figurative—he found himself curious to see what it would take to get Crimson to break.

It was the same relentless curiosity that had had him holding a magnifying glass over ants in the sunlight as a child. It wasn’t that he’d wanted to see the ants burn, exactly, but to prove whether a classmate’s claims on the matter were true. He just wanted to see what would happen.

He wanted to know if Crimson really was interested, or just as opposed to the idea as he’d said. It wasn’t hard to manufacture an encounter; Micah just had to make sure he was the only villain committing public villainy that day, and Crimson showed up like clockwork towards the end of the heist.

The hero announced his arrival with his fists—to be expected, given his pseudonym, but unexpected when compared with his usual behaviour. Micah ignored his disappointment, tempered his expectations, and dodged Crimson’s opening punch.

“It’s been a while,” he said, tucking the component he’d come for into his pocket. It had actually been less than a week since Micah had stopped Cirro from killing Crimson, but there had been no mention of that particular incident on any news outlet; the henchman’s tweet had been deleted. As far as Cadel was concerned, nothing had happened.

Crimson had regained his equilibrium; he grinned in response, and it even looked genuine. “I almost thought you’d gone on the straight and narrow.”

Was that a jab at his sexuality, or merely his continuing villainy? Micah narrowed his eyes. “Well, I would have, but I thought you’d miss me if I quit.”

Crimson’s grin faltered and he came at Micah again, but Micah had watched more than enough footage of various fights he’d had with other villains to recognize the feint for what it was. He evaded the true strike, coming out inside Crimson’s guard. Close enough to hear the way Crimson’s breath hitched, to see the way Crimson faltered; it was only the element of surprise that allowed Micah to tackle him to the floor, and the pin wouldn’t last long once Crimson regained his wits and remembered that he had actual superpowers.

“I thought you’d have more fight in you, Crimson,” Micah drawled. With his knees pressed to Crimson’s sides, straddling him, there was no mistaking the way Crimson shuddered beneath him.

“I—”

Micah’s phone vibrated in his pocket, alerting him to approaching police. He felt Crimson tense beneath him and managed to turn his momentum into a roll when the hero practically threw him off. Conveniently, he even ended up near the door.

“We should do this again sometime,” Micah said as he tossed out a smoke bomb. In a matter of seconds, the laboratory was filled with thick, noxious smoke. The smell was absolutely revolting, but ultimately harmless. He slipped away while Crimson cursed.

* * *

Two encounters was hardly enough to base a hypothesis on. Crimson’s reactions to Micah’s provocations suggested that he might not be entirely averse to fucking; or Micah could just be projecting his own interest. Naturally, he had to keep engineering reasons for them to meet.

By the fourth encounter, Crimson actually remembered that he had the upper hand in strength, at which point Micah remembered why he’d always made a point of escaping at the end of his heists before he could really engage Crimson. He was dabbing at the scrape high on one cheek with an alcohol swab—savouring the look of (possible) regret on Crimson’s face when he realized he’d actually drawn blood the day before—when his phone buzzed.

The scrape probably wouldn’t scar, but Micah didn’t want to risk not treating it properly all the same. His handsome looks wouldn’t be improved by any facial scars. But as he reached for the gauze to reapply it, his phone buzzed again, insistent.

“What is it?” Micah grumbled, pulling it out of his pocket. The screen immediately switched to a feed from a security cam: a group of gang members from the local chapter of an international crime ring had gathered in an anonymous basement. Muffled audio started playing a second later.

“—need to teach this fucking hero a lesson,” said the one who looked like the brains of the operation. Not the boss, of course; Crimson had left him for the police to pick up, along with ample evidence of his wrongdoing, just a few days before. “He can’t just mess with the Six Paths and get away with it.”

The assembled criminals nodded, a few of them shouting their agreement.

Micah scowled. Stepping in with Cirro had been one thing; his organization was based solely in Cadel. There was no way of knowing the extent of the Six Paths’ connections or what kind of enhanced individuals they might have at their disposal. Cadel was relatively small-time compared to some of the gang’s other areas of operation, that much Micah knew.

The screen zoomed in on the timestamp in the lower corner. It had been recorded today, but several hours earlier—

“Fuck,” Micah said.

* * *

“Why do you keep—saving me,” Crimson spat, stalking straight into Micah’s space as soon as they were away. If he was trying for a furious glare, the mask ruined it.

“To show you how it’s done?” Micah smiled when Crimson actually growled at that. His motivation had been preserving the status quo, as he’d told Cirro the first time: he didn’t want someone actually powerful showing up to “save” the city. “You’re getting careless,” he added. The ambush should have been obvious from a mile away; he’d watched the lead up on his way to stop it. “Is something distracting you?”

He tensed in spite of himself when Crimson lifted a hand, but all the hero did was smooth a thumb over his cheekbone. Pressing the tape back down over the gauze Micah had hastily applied before running out of his base again, Micah realized a moment later. His cheeks felt warm, and he only had the excuse of a recent injury on one side.

“I looked you up,” Crimson said, stepping back.

“Oh?” Micah managed. The words were like cold water, bringing him back to his senses. He was one to talk, getting distracted by something as small as a simple touch.

“Yeah. Everyone says you’re the most notorious villain in Cadel but you haven’t even killed that many people.”

“I think the bodies we just left behind might tell a different story,” Micah said, laying the amusement on thick to conceal anything else. Crimson had only knocked the Six Paths members out, but Micah had had no such compunctions.

“They were criminals.” Crimson started walking again, then paused. “How did you get here?”

“I drove.” Well, the car had driven itself, but Micah wasn’t about to tell Crimson that. “And I’m a criminal too. If you start making your own judgments, you’ll get branded a vigilante. Or worse.”

“You would know.”

“You really did look me up, huh.” Micah couldn’t force any false levity into his voice, but at least he kept any other emotion out of it too.

“You just—you let the villains get to you. But you could redeem yourself. You’ve already saved me twice.”

Micah drew a slow breath, and deliberately relaxed his jaw. Crimson was watching him, or at least had his head turned in Micah’s direction. He felt—angry, among other things, but he focused on that. He didn’t want to deal with the rest, didn’t want to stir up old ghosts that he’d long laid to rest. He went by his birth name—Micah Forde—because he knew no one would ever bother to look him up. Everything of note he’d done had been with his husband’s last name, anyway.

Fuck. He was thinking about it. Crimson grunted when Micah pushed him up against the wall, but otherwise didn’t react to the violence. “If I’m the hero, does that make you the damsel?” Micah demanded, leaning in close enough that he could feel Crimson’s breath against his face. “Going to give me a kiss in gratitude, Crimson?”

“It’s Adrian, actually,” Crimson said.

“You can’t just—” Micah recoiled, but Crimson caught his wrists in an unyielding grip before he could get too far. Before Micah could react to that, Adri— _Crimson_ had already reversed their positions, pinning Micah’s arms between the wall and his own body. “What the fuck is wrong with y—” Micah started, but Crimson kissed him before he could finish the question.


End file.
